Introduction

by MassanHello! This is Harry “massan” Cheong, a Hearthstone player and streamer.

I'd like to talk about the most successful style of Arena deck building that can be easily executed without the help of RNG (random number generator) during the draft. Not only have I had great success and consistency with this style, I believe it is the most common strategy for other high-level players.

The idea is to draft a midrange deck which relies on controlling the board and overwhelming your opponent once you have a several minions advantage. The main objective will be controlling your opponent's minions instead of going after his Health and making the efficient trades to prevent your opponent from buffing and getting back in the game.

Note: that not all heroes excel at midrange decks. Some modified tactics will be required to make this style work. This guide is written from overall point of view and we’ll cover class-specific cases in next guides.

Mana Curve

Mana curve is the key for midrange decks. It is so important that it is sometimes more important than picking valuable minions. This is because board control is very important, and you always want your minions on field every turn. Ideal mid range arena deck mana curve to be able to do above typically has following:

This is the "ideal" curve.

4-6 Two mana costing minions

4-5 Three mana costing minions

5-6 Four mana costing minions

4-5 'heavy hitters'.

8-10 non-minion cards and conditional minion cards

Being able to open with two or three mana costing minions and curve out consistently is very important. I value curving out so highly in a midrange deck because it will allow you to have the initiative early on. I see having eight to ten combined two and three drop minions optimal for most mid range decks. Spells can supplement this but are dependent on your opponent having minions on board. What we want to avoid is using our Hero Power early: it is very weak compared to having two mana minion on board.

Four drop minions are even more important than two or three drops. All promising four mana costing minions -- Yeti, Dark Iron Dwarf, Senjin Shield Master, and etc -- will trade evenly against a pair of two or three mana costing minions. This means even if you’re behind after turns two and three, you can catch up with a solid four drop. On top of that, four drops will often trade evenly versus five drops with very little help.

Heavy hitters basically refers to minions which have more, or equal, stats to five Attack and six Health. These minions are very resilient versus board clear, they will almost always trade 2-for-1, and they cannot be ignored due to their high Attack. To draw them consistently by turn six or seven, should aim to have four or five of them.

Here are the other curves: fast (left) and slow (right).

Note: these are not perfect representations because the conditional cards vary in cost. Drafter discretion is advised.

Most of non-minion cards and conditional minions make the cut based on either mana efficiency or card efficiency but rarely both. For a example, Hunter’s Mark will reduce one minion’s health down to one or zero mana; while this is very mana efficient, it is not card efficient since you’ll need to run another card into that minion. Cards such as Cult Master, on the other hand, will draw cards but it only provides a 4/2 body for four mana. True Silver Champion or Fiery War Axe often kills two minions at that cost -- and does damage times equal to its mana twice -- which makes them both card and mana efficient at the cost of your Health.

Non-minion cards and conditional minions will help you get card, board, and/or health advantage. Eight to ten of them will allow you to have enough cards to support your core minions while drawing into new minions. Conditional cards, however, will stay in your hand until its conditions are met and will be very weak on their own.

Card Draw

Remember this guy?

Midrange decks with a low mana curve needs more card draw. With low mana curve, you will need to refill your hand more often. Decks with a lower curve should aim for at least six cards which at least replace themselves. For the ideal mana curve -- described above -- you should average between three and four cards that can draw into additional cards. Midrange decks with a higher curve can get away with fewer draw spells but should still try and grab a couple.

Card draw is most important to the low curve decks because you will be playing two cards a turn after turn five: by turn eight you'll most likely be out of cards. If you're unable to kill your opponent by then, you’ll likely lose board control and the game. On the other hand, heavy curve decks without draw will easily sustain themselves until turn ten or eleven without running low on cards in hand. The downside to higher curves here is that you may miss plays in the early turns. When you miss drops early, you are providing opportunity for your opponent to have board control and overwhelm you. Another reason why heavier decks want less card draw is because those spell which replace themselves are weaker: you need the strongest low cost minions to survive early.

What to Pick

What do I pick?!

So we've discussed what a good curve looks like, but you still need to fill it out effectively. To do this, you need to know which cards are best for their mana slot. This is where my Tier List is going to come in. My list will break down the cards and rank them based on mana cost which is an approach not yet taken.

Simply put, the best midrange cards are those which have the most stats per mana. In Hearthstone, relatively few minions have stats which total 2(Mana Cost)+1 without conditions. As a result, minions which have easy conditions to meet -- or none at all -- are preferred but it’s okay to have a few conditional cards since they tend to perform better when said conditions are met.

Playstyle

The goal of a midrange deck is to have solid board control and force trades in your favor. Doing so effectively will prevent your opponent from benefiting from buffs and utility minions. This means that you must play minions early and do whatever it takes to protect them. You want to have as many minions alive as possible -- even at low health -- so you can sacrifice them later and protect those which that will survive mid game sweepers.

When clearing your opponent’s board, cases will still arise where it is correct to attack their Health. When your opponent cannot kill your minions, even with help of area of effect spells, then you want to hit your opponent directly. For an example, if you have Boulderfist Ogre and your Mage opponent has a River Crocolisk, you do not need to kill their 2/3 since it cannot kill the ogre even after Flamestrike.

Once you have board control, maintaining it should be fairly straight forward. You will, however, always have to think about possible board clear spells and what such a spell would do to your position. Midrange decks are weak versus board clears so you always want to have a back-up plan. Most importantly, do not over-commit: force your opponent to cast their spells early.

Conclusions

So there you have it, an introduction to midrange Arena drafting and a look at some of the more important cards to be looking for. In the coming weeks I'm going to be going over some of the better classes for drafting in this style and how their class specific cards fit into this archetype.

The tempo decks in arena from my point of view : - get a good deck and have fun - or get the board control, empty your hand until Flamestrike and lose...

That's why i like to play Paladin or Hunter : heal yourself from the damage of fireball or kill the mage with your hero power after Flamestrike :D

On a more serious note, i desagree with your ranking of the 4 mana rare minions. I actually think Twilight Drake is quite bad in arena. If you play a tempo based deck, you have to play minion before turn 4 and it will rarely be better than the Violet Teacher. It's hard countered by any silence, and if you draw it late game, you will rarely have better than a 4/3... Argus is sooo good if you have a good start, and violet teacher's effect can increase her value to be superior to a YetiI could be wrong but i never had good play with Twilight Drake in arena, and I play more often against 4-2 Drake than against 4-7 or more !

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." Albert Einstein

This is a really sub-par draft. When in the world was a Moonfire the right choice? 1-drops are definitely sub-par in arena in general, I think I would've taken anything over the Argent Squires, Abusive Sergeant, Lightwarden. Bootybay, Lord of the Arena, Oasis, Ironbeak and even Gadgetzan. If you were choosing poorly in order to follow the perfect mana curve, I think you cut out too much on better cards.

Great guide Massan! I've had success with the same style as well. For me, the use of efficient removal spells/weapons has always been the key to 12 wins. It gives you so much tempo.

For those in comment I think flamestrike is overrated. It is an excellent spell, but you only have at max 3 mana after using it. As long as you don't overcommit, and have cards left, you still have board control and will be fine.

On April 19 2014 06:10 RoranRock wrote:The tempo decks in arena from my point of view : - get a good deck and have fun - or get the board control, empty your hand until Flamestrike and lose...

That's why i like to play Paladin or Hunter : heal yourself from the damage of fireball or kill the mage with your hero power after Flamestrike :D

On a more serious note, i desagree with your ranking of the 4 mana rare minions. I actually think Twilight Drake is quite bad in arena. If you play a tempo based deck, you have to play minion before turn 4 and it will rarely be better than the Violet Teacher. It's hard countered by any silence, and if you draw it late game, you will rarely have better than a 4/3... Argus is sooo good if you have a good start, and violet teacher's effect can increase her value to be superior to a YetiI could be wrong but i never had good play with Twilight Drake in arena, and I play more often against 4-2 Drake than against 4-7 or more !

If you play one card per turn, Twilight Drake will still be a 4/5, just as good as a Yeti.Twilight Drake is also not hard countered by silence. You'll be spending 2 or 4 mana on the silence, and the 4/1 drake can still trade with your Spellbreaker, or whatever other card you may have.

Massan, this obviously took a lot of time and effort to write, I know whenever I think of writing something a fraction as comprehensive I give up early because it's too much work.

I think this has the chance to be the best arena guide published to date. There are a handful of guides out there which talk about what to draft and some very general play, but you can read them and not do that well because of some of the things you mention.

A few months of years down the road, maybe people won't remember who won what or who came up with what deck, but the average player will probably read whatever cornerstone guides to arena may exist, and this (especially if it expands to classes) might be one of them. So congrats on making arena harder.

And I'm curious about

The idea is to draft a midrange deck which relies on controlling the board and overwhelming your opponent once you have a several minions advantage

Doesn't a control deck also rely on controlling the board, and wouldn't tempo decks also rely on controlling the board and overwhelming the opponent? And could we clarify the non-midrange decks?

Yeah, it looks solid. Only concerns are:- Lack of real big minions lategame, as well as no Sprint to make up for that.- Very weak in the 4 slot compared to most decks.- Lack of early removal options, though the high minion quality + rogue hero power help make up for that.

Overall though, your minion quality is very high, but you don't have a lot of good tempo spells like Backstab or Eviscerate. You will do well if you draw decent hands and can just play minions on curve and trade them as your minion quality is quite good overall, but if you fall behind on tempo early and your opponent has good removal (which you are lacking a little bit), you could have trouble. Assassinate and the Assassin's Blades are strong removal in the midgame, but they're also kind of situational compared to things like Backstab and Eviscerate because they cost a lot of mana.

I find it nearly impossible to predict the amount of wins I'll get. Sometimes games and draws turn out in your favor, sometimes they don't. That has the capability of going 9+ wins, but unless you're a good player and get good draws it will likely die down earlier.

This is a really sub-par draft. When in the world was a Moonfire the right choice? 1-drops are definitely sub-par in arena in general, I think I would've taken anything over the Argent Squires, Abusive Sergeant, Lightwarden. Bootybay, Lord of the Arena, Oasis, Ironbeak and even Gadgetzan. If you were choosing poorly in order to follow the perfect mana curve, I think you cut out too much on better cards.

The Lightwarden was an actual honest misclick, Oasis was a mistake probably, I'll even concede Lord of the Arena.But Argent Squire not good?! Abusive sergeant not good in a minion heavy board control deck?! And as always I really, really, don't get the Ironbeak hate, don't think of it as a 2 drop minion, you don't play it on the curve, think about it like a spell that says silence a minion and deal 2 damage for 2 mana. Now think about all the stuff that silence completely shuts down.

The idea is to draft a midrange deck which relies on controlling the board and overwhelming your opponent once you have a several minions advantage

Doesn't a control deck also rely on controlling the board, and wouldn't tempo decks also rely on controlling the board and overwhelming the opponent? And could we clarify the non-midrange decks?

I could clarify this bit more, although not sure needs to. Control decks relies on surviving and removing opponent's board while getting heavy minions on board. It almost has no intention to take board and have damage on board until you can play big minions.Midrange decks relies on having damage on board and having superior board than your opponent, and being able to clear your opponent's board in your favor. by no means this deck will try to outlast your opponent(unless your opponent plays rush deck)Tempo decks can be clarified as mid range deck, as its goal is to 'out tempo' your opponent.